CHAPTER CXXIV.
THE DEATH OF A TITAN.
At the moment when Porthos, more accustomed to the darkness than all these men coming from open daylight, was looking round him to see if in this night Aramis were not making him some signal, he felt his arm gently touched, and a voice low as a breath murmured in his ear, "Come."
"Oh!" said Porthos.
"Hush!" said Aramis, if possible, still more softly.
And amid the noise of the third brigade, which continued to advance, amid the imprecations of the guards left alive, of the dying, rattling their last sigh, Aramis and Porthos glided imperceptibly along the granite walls of the cavern. Aramis led Porthos into the last but one compartment, and showed him, in a hollow of the rocky wall, a barrel of powder weighing from seventy to eighty pounds, to which he had just attached a match. "My friend," said he to Porthos, "you will take this barrel, the match of which I am going to set fire to, and throw it amid our enemies; can you do so?"
"Parbleu!" replied Porthos; and he lifted the barrel with one hand. "Light it!"
"Stop," said Aramis, "till they are all massed together, and then, my Jupiter, hurl your thunderbolt among-them."
"Light it," repeated Porthos.
"On my part," continued Aramis, "I will join our Bretons, and help them to get the canoe to the sea. I will wait for you on the shore; launch it strongly, and hasten to us."